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sdsichero wrote:So who are your guys' (or girls' if they exist here) favorite female characters from the big two?

Not those big two.

DCArtemis (Young Justice) - I would really like a version similar to the one from the Young Justice animated series to appear in comics. Black Canary (Dinah Lance) - I really miss the pre-Flashpoint version of Black Canary.Iris AllenMeraMiss MartianOracle (Barbara Gordon)Power Girl (Kara Zor-L)Sadie FalkSpeedy (Mia Dearden)Stargirl - As it has already been mentioned, I miss the pre-Flashpoint JSA version that was dating Billy Batson.Starfire (Koriand'r) - Pre-Flashpoint all the way. I will begrudgingly admit that Lobdell has done wonders to repair the damage that he created but she is still far from the Kori that I enjoyed reading about.Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) Wonder Woman - Even though I dropped her series, I have really been enjoying the DCnU version of the character.

MarvelBlack CatBlack WidowBlink - The AoA version is one of my favorite characters in comics.CrystalEmma FrostGamoraKate Bishop - Her involvement in the original Young Avengers series made the series one of my favorite books at the time.Kitty PrydeMockingbirdMs. Marvel - Sorry, I know she is Captain Marvel now but I prefer her as Ms. Marvel. Psylocke - I was never a fan of the character until reading Remender's Uncanny X-Force.RogueSharon CarterShe HulkWasp

I'm probably leaving out a bunch of characters but this will probably do for now.

Why do you think it's been so difficult for Marvel to establish a female hero who isn't 1.) based of a male counterpart, 2.) made to give gender balance to a team or 3.) made to be the love interest of a more popular male hero?

Kelly Sue Deconnick wrote:Marvel is a publicly-owned company. They exist to make money. Period. If there was an idea that extra dollar could be made with female-led comics, Marvel would have more lady-led books than Avengers titles--with multiple variant covers, no doubt.Why are there so many Avengers titles? They sell. Reliably.Right now, we're stuck in a cycle. The perception is that women do not buy comics in significant numbers and that men do not support lady-led books, unless those books are loosely-disguised T&A books.Retailers are stretched very thin. Comics are not returnable so whatever they buy, they're stuck with.Let's remember this, okay? It's important. The publisher's customer is not the reader. Follow? The publisher's customer is the retailer. Once the retailer orders the book, from the publisher's standpoint, THAT IS THE SALE.Those sales figures you see on icv2 or whatever? Those do not indicate the number of readers who pick up a book, they indicate the number of copies ordered by stores.We all together on this? Good. Okay.So.Ever wondered how a book could get cancelled before it ever hits the shelves? That's how. Once the orders from the retailers are in, those are the sales figures. Period. Doesn't matter what the internet thinks of the book(1), doesn't matter who reviews it favorably on IGN or CBR or whatever. It matters how many copies of the book the retailers order before the book even hits the shelf.The retailers have limited budgets, limited shelf space, and hundreds of new comics that come out every week. With rare exception, comics lose their value quicker than used cars (quarter bins, anyone?) so retailers must order very, very carefully. Every month, they have to try to determine exactly how many copies of each title they can sell through. If they over-order on just 2 titles per week, think about how quickly those stack up (literally!).What's the takeaway here? Change is hard. Retailers, understandably, cannot take risks. Perception becomes fact.If our "base" won't reliably support female-led books (and that is a whole other conversation that I do not have time for) then we need new readers. Strictly from a sustainability standpoint, we need new readers--our readership is aging and dwindling and the goodwill we should be getting from the comic book commercials commonly called "tentpole movies" we are, in large part, squandering. As an industry we put up high thresholds against new readers--whether it's something as culturally repugnant as this whole "authentic fangirl" crap or just our mind-boggling practices of shelving by publisher and numbering books into the 600s.Think about the manga boom for a minute. The American notion had always been that women would not buy comics in significant numbers. There was even a commonly bandied about notion that "women are not visual." Who bought manga in the US? Largely women and girls. At ten bucks a pop, no less. Women spent literally millions of dollars on what? On comics.Now, some people will argue that that had as much to do with the diversity of genre in manga as anything else--and that is a fair point. But I would argue that there is nothing inherently masculine about the science fiction aesthetic, nothing inherently masculine about power fantasies or aspirations to heroism.So what else was it about manga that got women to buy in in huge numbers?Well, for one thing, they didn't have to venture into comic book stores to get it. No risks of unfriendly clerks or clientele, authenticity tests or the porn basement atmosphere that even if it's not the reality of most stores, is certainly the broad perception. They could buy manga at the mall. What's more, they didn't need a guide. All they had to do was find the manga section, flip the books over and read the description (just like they'd done with any book they'd ever bought in their lives) and then, once they found one that interested them, find the volume with the giant number 1 on it and head to the check out.Contrast that with an American comic books store experience for a new reader. First challenge--find the store. Now say you just saw the Avengers movie and you think you might want to find something about Black Widow. Where do you even start? If you don't have a friendly clerk, you're going to get overwhelmed and leave. If there's no BLACK WIDOW #1 on the shelf, you literally do not know what to do. New comics readers have to have a guide.Compared to getting into traditional American comics, it's easier for a new reader to learn to read backwards! Think about that.Anyway. That's it. The summary is "change is hard." Our industry is built to sell Batman (literally--all of our sales figures are relative to the sales of Batman) to the same guys who have always bought Batman and change is hard.So what can we do? As readers, the most powerful tool we have is the pre-order. PRE-ORDER, PRE-ORDER, PRE-ORDER. Why? Because when you pre-order with a store, that is a sale to the store. The store is not assuming any risk. Therefore they bump up their orders with the publisher, which is reflected in the title's sales, which then becomes a cue to the publisher... hm... maybe these books will sell? Let's make more!With me? If there is a book outside the most mainstream of mainstream--especially books from smaller publishers, but also "midlist" books from DC and Marvel, if you want to encourage those choices, the thing you must do is pre-order.Do I hate asking that? Why yes I do. I don't want to ask people to commit to paying $3-$4 for a book three months before they've even seen it. It's embarrassing. But it's literally the only way I can see to affect change.All right. That's all I've got.

Interesting. Though I am sure it sold a lot more in bookstores, the big manga boom here in Hawaii started in the comic shops. And it was a somewhat younger demographic. This was before manga was widely carried in bookstores here. Again though, I'm sure sales soared after it went to bookstores.

Also, I remember finding it interesting that X-Men letter columns back in the day having many female names attached to the letters.

I haven't liked DC much since around 2000 I think. I still read it but don't really love it. It's weird, I loved Davids's Young Justice and Johns/Goyer JSA but can't really think of characters I like from those. Most of my DC love is from Giffen/DeMatteis JL.

Looks like the writing is on the wall for Red She-Hulk. On Captain Marvel, what I read of it didn't captivate me. It was a decent read, but it came across as a story focused on strong women who got the short end of the stick in American history, instead of a Carol Danvers tale proper.

I think the writing is on the wall for Red She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Journey Into Mystery. I can't believe Marvel hasn't cancelled all three of those titles yet. Out of those three I'm enjoying Journey Into Mystery the most.

GiveWarAChance wrote:I think the writing is on the wall for Red She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Journey Into Mystery. I can't believe Marvel hasn't cancelled all three of those titles yet. Out of those three I'm enjoying Journey Into Mystery the most.

I've heard that's actually a solid title.

Captain Marvel may get a boost from the upcoming Avengers Assemble crossover, but it doesn't seem like the title has the legs to last beyond any temporary sales bumps.